"It's important to realize that I was actually black before the election."

To believe that the president is becoming less popular because of his colour, you have to believe either that tens of millions of Americans have suddenly become racist this year, or that they didn't notice that he was black last year.

"[A]fter one year of studying physics, I discovered that physics was very hard. So I decided to be an intellectual instead. In those days, one could spend four years in City College becoming an intellectual. It was very pleasant, because you didn’t have to go to class.

He was at New York University, trying to get a good enough degree to get himself into law school. He recalls "screwing up badly in an accounting course". But not to worry. The teacher had lost a son in Korea, and he knew Rangel was a Korea veteran.

"He complained that I wasn't responding in class, which was true enough because I didn't know what the hell was going on. 'But damn it,' he concluded, 'you served your country, and that's what counts!' He gave me a B and I stayed away from accounting for the rest of my life." (page 100)

I"M writing a profile of Charlie Rangel this week. What a man he is. I've been devouring his memoirs, which are utterly gripping.

He appears to have told his ghostwriter all the juiciest stories from his mis-spent youth. Many people with a family background as rough as Mr Rangel's would complain. Not Rangel. You can almost hear him chuckling as he recalls the scrapes he got into.

As a teenager, young Charlie and his pals organised a dance to make some money. It poured with rain and no one showed up. When the owner of the venue asked them to pay for hiring it, as agreed,

I WAS in the Supreme Court yesterday, watching the argument about “Hillary: The Movie” and free speech for this week’s column. It was Sonia Sotomayor’s first case as a Supreme Court Justice, so all eyes were on her. She didn’t say much, but one thing she said struck me. The courts “created corporations as persons,” she said, and “there could be an argument made that that was the Court's error to start with.” It was a mistake, she suggested, that the Supreme Court “imbued a creature of State law with human characteristics.” She’s referring to the notion that corporations have a right to free speech under the First Amendment. She appears not to agree with it. From the tone of her remarks, it seems she’d rather they shut up. So if you are a corporation and a politician vows just before an election to ban your product, you can’t take out ads to shoot back at him. That hardly seems fair.

CRICKET is an elegant, skilful, dignified game, but it does go on a bit. So in the small island nation where I was born, we have a tradition of streaking. When the game gets a bit dull, someone takes off his clothes and runs across the pitch. It's rude, and it makes most of the spectators think you are a prat. But it gets you on television, and your mates no doubt congratulate you afterwards at the pub.

Barack Obama is an elegant, skilful, dignified speaker, but he does go on a bit. So Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, decided to heckle him last night. It was rude, and made most people think him the American equivalent of a prat. But it got him on television.

HAVING vanquished Van Jones (see below), Republicans are now gunning for Cass Sunstein, Obama's nominee for regulatory czar. I thought Jones deserved the boot. He is a radical who flirts with utter nutters. Sunstein, by contrast, is one of Obama's better appointments.

As I've argued before, the White House needs someone who will take a cold hard look at which regulations are cost-effective and which are not. Sunstein is just the man for the job.

But Republican senators have put a hold on his nomination, and the blowhards of cable and talk radio are denouncing him from the rooftops.

A COURT in New Hampshire has ordered a home-schooled 10-year-old girl to be sent to a public school against her mother's wishes. No one is claiming that the girl is being neglected, and she is by all measures doing well in her studies.

The reason she must be sent to a public school is that, according to the judge, her Christian faith is too rigid and she needs to hear some opposing points of view.

This case has been a cause celebre among home-schoolers for some time. (They constantly talk to each other online, so news of threats to homeschooling spread fast.)

I take the mother's side without hesitation. If a judge can over-rule a parent's wishes because the child is not being exposed to a secular viewpoint, presumably another judge can over-rule my wishes because my children are not being exposed to a fundamentalist Christian viewpoint.

In general, unless a parent is neglecting or abusing a child, the courts should stay out.

William McGurn, writing in today's Wall St Journal, juxtaposes this case with another one I was not aware of. A 17 year old girl from a Muslim family in Ohio has run away to Florida, where she is staying with a Christian family whose church she found on Facebook.

Her parents want her back. She says she doesn't want to go home because her father has threatened to kill her for converting to Christianity. Her father says this is nonsense: that the Christians have put this absurd notion into his daughter's head out of prejudice against Muslims. Would a rigid Muslim father allow his daughter to be a cheerleader, he asks?

This case is much harder. Obviously, if the girl's parents are planning to kill her, she should not be returned to their custody. On the other hand, if this is just a fib she's cooked up because she wanted to run away from home, she should be returned to her parents. But which is it?

THE White House has released the text of the pep-talk Barack Obama is going to give to school kids tomorrow. It reads pretty well to me, but for a more authentic test, I thought I'd try it out on my eight year old.

His reactions went something like this.

Obama: "I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox."

Lexington junior: "Xbox? Those things are awesome. And I haven't got one."

Obama: "Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures.

"kept his advocacy real and didn't compromise his principles. And so when he was appointed to a high-level White House job, it seemed to validate that you could, in fact, keep it real and also advance in American politics and government."

It seems odd to describe as "keeping it real" someone whose grasp on reality appears so tenuous.

SINCE the lawyers in Congress are determined to set rules for doctors, a doctor writing in the Wall Street Journal suggests that doctors be allowed to do the same for lawyers:

I will gladly volunteer for the important duty of controlling and regulating lawyers. Since most of what lawyers do is repetitive boilerplate or pushing paper, physicians would have no problem dictating what is appropriate for attorneys. We physicians know much more about legal practice than lawyers do about medicine.

SOME people are outraged that Barack Obama is going to address schoolkids next week. Jim Greer, the chairman of the Florida Republicans, says:

"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology. The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power."

He goes on to liken the president to the Pied Piper, which is a bit harsh. Didn't the Pied Piper lead all the kids into a cave from which they never returned?

Some on the right are urging parents to keep their kids away from school next Tuesday. This is ridiculous. Obama is addressing them once. It is a useful part of their civic education to know what the president looks and sounds like. If parents don't agree with Obama's message, they should explain to their children why he is wrong.

OK, I know many kids are not old enough to make an informed decision. But they can't vote, either, and it doesn't hurt to get them thinking logically about the issues.

During last year's election campaign, I answered all my children's questions about the differences between the two candidates and their policies as fairly as I could, without saying which of the two I might vote for, if I had a vote.

I don't know how much they understood. My oldest son concluded that McCain was the better candidate because he had done cool things like drop bombs on people, whereas Obama had taught law and been a community organiser, which sounds kind of boring to a seven year old.

FINALLY, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two journalists for Al Gore's Current TV, have given their account of how they were grabbed by North Korean border guards in March.

It seems they were on Chinese soil at the time, having placed no more than a tentative foot or two on the North Korean side of the frozen river that marks the border:

Midway across the ice, we heard yelling. We looked back and saw two North Korean soldiers with rifles running toward us. Instinctively, we ran.

We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards. We were not. We tried with all our might to cling to bushes, ground, anything that would keep us on Chinese soil, but we were no match for the determined soldiers. They violently dragged us back across the ice to North Korea and marched us to a nearby army base, where we were detained. Over the next 140 days, we were moved to Pyongyang, isolated from one another, repeatedly interrogated and eventually put on trial and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor.

It is nothing new for the platform-booted God-King Kim Jong Il to have people kidnapped. But this was particularly brazen.